


Armor

by CalamityCons



Series: Noble in Name and in Thought [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alien Culture, Dark Past, Gen, Mystery, Renegade Commander Shepard, culture clash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 07:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3438371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalamityCons/pseuds/CalamityCons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Shepard's actions don't add up. Tali intends to find out what's going on.</p><p>Many thanks to theherocomplex for her beta work!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Colossus IX

“Um, Commander?” Shepard’s smile put Tali off, her bare, lightly-haired arms leaned over the table with her fingertips pressed together. Tali shifted in her seat and pushed back against the edge of the plastic table, using it as a makeshift barrier. “What is this, exactly?”

“It’s for you.” Shepard nodded and leaned in a bit further, her head hovering above the armor box she plunked in front of her while Tali was in the middle of a mindless game, wide awake while everyone else on the ship slept. She tried to keep her distance from the human’s uncomfortably familiar gaze by pushing her chair back again, but the commander just leaned in a few more fractions.

“For… me?” Tali hated the commander’s sharp stare. The last time she stared at her like that, she practically yelled at her to hand over the damned evidence. Tali shook her head. “There’s got to be some kind of angle here. You hate me. Keelah, you hate everyone.”

Shepard’s smile faded a bit, and thankfully, her sharp eyes dulled. Tali breathed a small sigh broadcasted by the horrible microphone in her helmet. She held her helmet up by the crook of her palm between her thumb and forefinger.

“You’re kicking me off the ship, aren’t you?” Tali swallowed in an attempt to open her throat. “I suppose I should have expected this. My skills are too specific for most of your ground missions anyway.” Tali pushed her chair inwards and grasped the sides of the box to open the hatches. 

Suddenly Shepard’s hands clamped on top of her own and forced the box closed again. “I’m not giving this to you to say goodbye, Tali.”

“Then why?”

“It’s… Consider it an apology.”

“An apology, what? Why would you want to apologize? To me of all people? Keelah, you hate me! You hate everyone!”

“Tali, I don’t hate you! I don’t hate anybody on this ship!”

“Really? Is that why you used me to expose Saren? Why you left me behind on the last mission?”

“Tali, I left you behind because we were going against batarians. You’re better suited to fighting geth—”

“Because my people have been fighting them for centuries? Commander, I’m not a looping program, I can handle more than you’d expect.”

“Not without decent armor you can’t. That piece of shit you wear into battle couldn’t stop a spitball from piercing through you.”

“It’s not my fault there isn’t any decent quarian armor in the galaxy!”

“I know it isn’t! That’s why I got you this.” The commander pushed the box away from her and loosened her grip a fraction. “My team needs the highest quality equipment available for these missions, Tali, and I can’t bring you into the fray when you’re in danger of a suit puncture.”

“You… you actually mean that, don’t you?”

“Tali, I admit it. The way I treated you when we met was unfair. I take full responsibility for it and I was hoping we could start over after I gave you this armor.” Shepard closed her eyes and didn’t open them until she was done speaking. “You were the only one I spoke to on the Citadel who didn’t already know who I was, what I did. I had a chance to make a different impression on you than I did on everyone else I met, to prove that I wasn’t a single-minded military idiot… and I blew it. I’m sorry.”

Shepard drew her hands away from Tali’s own and rested them on the table. Tali stared at the box again for precisely ten seconds, listening to the soft, nearly imperceptible whirr of the engines a floor below them. She clicked the hatches on the side of the box open and there, folded neatly inside, was a set of Colossus IX armor.

She snatched the cuirasses instantly, hands shaking. Underneath the impeccably light ceramics was red decorative fabric with no pattern, flexible and with expertly hidden seams for its pockets. If there was a way to make Tali any more breathless, she didn’t know it. “H-how did you even get this?” she whispered.

“The chief engineer from Asteroid X57 said he had worked with some quarians. They left this behind after they finished working on the fusion torches.” The commander’s mouth turned up at the corners but the rest of her face seemed… off. Tali couldn’t quite decipher humans when their eyes were so dull and small. Sometimes it registered as if they didn’t have any eyes at all.

“This is… Commander, this is quite possibly the most advanced model of quarian armor in existence! I, I don’t know how I could possibly thank you.”

“Hey, you don’t have to thank me. This is supposed to be an apology, remember?”

“If this is what you do to apologize, I can’t say I wouldn’t like it if you made mistakes more often!”

“Ha… yeah.” Shepard kept the corners of her mouth lifted, but her eyes began to wander along the edges of her vision. 

“Thank you, Shepard. Really.” Tali followed Shepard’s gaze to the sleeper pods and got an idea. “Would you mind letting me, um…?” Shepard wasn’t looking at her. Tali coughed to get her attention. “I’d like to put the armor on right now, if I can.”

“You were thinking of using one of the sleeper pods?”

Tali nodded. “Would you mind letting me know if anyone needs me while I’m changing? I know Engineer Adams has the midnight shift right now but if anything comes up…” She didn’t want to take any chances with outside exposure. Damn these suits. Tali was usually on midnight shift herself, but Engineer Adams seemed to be under the impression that quarians were diurnal, like humans, and wanted her to ‘get some sleep on schedule for once.’ 

Shepard chuckled between chewing and swallowed before answering. “There won’t be any severe engineering emergencies at two in the morning, Tali.” 

“You’re awful.” Tali pulled away from the table a bit too quickly and knocked her chair over. “I’ll pick that up later!” Moments later she was situated neatly within the sleeper pod, the Colossus armor balanced atop her head. She began to remove the fabric of her current enviro-suit.

It felt amazing to leave her skin out for a little bit. She might get a light fever but it didn’t matter to her. The padding of her old suit chafed sometimes, the tacked on armored sections made her limbs numb, and she had never been able to breathe decently filtered air since she left the Rayya. She took a small moment to savor the feel of air recycled only once on her skin.

After replacing her gauntlets, she began to lift her chin up to replace her chest plate. As she leaned upward however, the Colossus armor on her head hit the ceiling and stopped her short, making her curse. 

“Any problems?” Shepard must have moved closer to the sleeper pod while Tali had been replacing her gauntlets. Keelah, she really was concerned, wasn’t she? Tali furrowed her brow.

“It’s no big deal, Commander. I’ve bumped my head against plenty of ceilings before. The helmet usually gets in the way of their nefarious meddling.” Tali shimmied a bit so the chest plate she wore unbuckled from her shoulders. She let it join her old purple gauntlets at the bottom of the pod.

“Bet the ceilings have been plotting your destruction for a while now. Want to talk about it?”

Tali sighed a bit while she situated the black chest plate, curling the decorative ribbon around her neck for now. She had been dreading this conversion; she had hoped that, if she played her cards right, she wouldn’t have to bring up any details of her personal life while on the flotilla. She’d much rather keep the conversation to her people as a whole. Less… personal. 

But, her commander had asked her a question. No secrets among shipmates, Tali, her father’s voice echoed in her ears. Secrets lead to suspicion, suspicion to investigation, and investigations reveal everything. Whatever you were trying to hide will always be discovered. Better to be straightforward with everyone.

“According to all our historical records, I’m one of the tallest quarians ever born.” Tali’s shoulders slumped, and she rested her forehead on the glass in front of her. “Didn’t exactly make life easy for me growing up. Not hard to pick me out in a crowd.”

“Really? You’re about as tall as I am. Didn’t know quarians were that short.” Tali couldn’t quite make out the strange inflection in Shepard’s voice given by the translator, but she assumed it meant Shepard was trying to comfort her.

“Maybe it just wasn’t conducive to reproduction to be tall as a prehistoric quarian.” Tali fought with a stuck greave on her left leg. “Quarian men and women are all around the same height. Well, except for me. I’m the freak.” Tali tried to laugh through her last two words. It didn’t sound quite right.

“You’re not a freak here, Tali. Everyone onboard the Normandy is about as tall as or taller than you are. If it makes you feel better? Humans think tall people are sexy.” An undertone of laughter colored Shepard’s words. 

Tali grinned as she finished clasping the new greave to her left leg and began working on her right. “Oh really? Does that mean you think Garrus is sexy? His head is the highest of everyone on board,” The right leg’s greave was much easier to remove. Tali let it join the other pieces of her old Hydra armor on the ground. She heard Shepard snort out a guffaw from outside the pod.

“Okay, what’s going on? Just yesterday Ashley brought up the topic of kissing turians. There some kind of conspiracy?” 

“Rest assured there is no conspiracy on my end.” Tali giggled a bit. “Let’s talk about something else. You say humans think tall people are beautiful, yes?”

“Yeah, so?”

“What else do humans find attractive?” Tali tried to keep her voice light as she changed the subject. Shepard might be one of the prettiest humans ever, Tali thought as she finally finished replacing the greave on her right leg. She’s tall. Tali began to stash her helmet away and fiddled with the decorative fabric.

“You’re asking the wrong woman. I haven’t followed fashion trends since I was 12 years old.”

“Come on, you know more than that, Commander. You were the one who brought up human beauty standards in the first place.” 

Shepard laughed again. “I’ll bite. I dabbled in makeup when I was a kid. Sometimes I still do, but I can never find any blush that’s the right tone for my skin. All the decent ones are meant for women with lighter skin.”

“So humans only make beauty products for specific skin tones? That doesn’t make any sense.” Tali tilted her head and shimmied a bit to let the fabric on her suit fall properly. The ribbons were mostly aesthetic, but it never hurt to look pretty.

“Nah, there are plenty of skin products for women of my complexion, I just didn’t like the brands. I was too broke to pay for the skin lightening injections anyway. The temporaries go for about 6000 credits.”

“Temporary ones are that expensive?” What a strange beauty standard, Tali thought. I’d be glad I could see someone else’s skin at all. “I can’t imagine how much the permanent ones cost.”

“You have no idea. At least three different courier gangs back in the city I grew up in gave counterfeit permanents to prostitutes and misguided fashionistas. Some of the couriers were too dumb to tell the difference between the permanents and goddamn mercury.” Shepard’s voice lost the air it had before, stained with… regret? “Way too many junkies on the streets got a side of poison with their pretty, pale skin.”

Tali felt some strange extra weight on her hood. She patted behind her neck and found a pocket hidden underneath. It was large, and seemed suitable for holding a lot of things. She gave a quick nod of approval before finally swapping the faceplate on her helmet. She didn’t feel it was appropriate to leave the pod now however, so she just rested her hand on the glass and thought for a moment.

“Did you take any of those… counterfeits? Is… that how you know about this?” Shepard’s skin wasn’t particularly light. From what she had seen of humanity she was darker than most, but not as dark as some. To think of Shepard injecting herself to look beautiful, only to come out shaking and puking… That wasn’t honorable for a Captain.

“No, no, that’s not…” Shepard paused. “I used powders that went on top of my skin. There were times when I went overboard and I just rolled with it. Still can’t remember how I managed to fill my bathroom with green eye shadow and yellow lipstick, but nobody keeps the Butcher of Torfan away from her bat-shit beauty habits, you know?” Tali laughed in spite of herself. Somehow, Shepard always knew the best way to lighten the mood. Now she was ready.

“Alright, Commander. Are you prepared to behold my beauty?” Tali opened the door as gracefully as she could, spreading her arm outward in an imitation of the old quarian empresses of the homeworld. “Feast your eyes on Queen Tali’Zorahck!”

The pieces of armor she had let fall to the bottom of the sleeper pod tumbled out onto the plastic floor, clanking. Tali nearly tripped when she tried to pick it up, snagging one foot in the divider between the pod and the floorboard. Shepard straightened her up with a light biotic throw before she could sustain any damage to her new armor.

“Queen Tali-Zorack needs to work on a more coordinated entrance.” Shepard laughed.

“I didn’t even get to reveal the next tax percentages for the province I rule over.” Tali bent down to pick up her old pieces of armor, folding them up nicely and placing them in the box the Colossus IX armor came in, Shepard close behind.

“That province of yours is lucky to have a queen that looks like she could kick my ass,” Shepard said. 

Tali laughed, a conspiring smile worthy of a sister gracing her hidden face. “I appreciate it, Shepard.”


	2. A Disgusting Man

“They told me it was you, but I don’t believe it. Shepard grew up and turned into a soldier.” Tali didn’t know the human man who spoke, and by the look on Wrex’s face he either didn’t know him either or didn’t particularly care to see him again. Judging by the nearly quarian level of exaggeration in her body language, Shepard didn’t like him at all.

“Have we met?” Shepard said. That was… unsettling. Based on what the man said earlier he knew Shepard from before she joined the Alliance, yet she didn’t seem to know who he was... 

Was he an agent for the Shadow Broker? That deserved suspicion, and in Tali’s case, quite a lot of ire. Her own dealings with the Shadow Broker went sideways because of a host of stupid betrayals. If this man intended to harm them, Tali would have to be ready. She reached behind for the shotgun on the small of her back.

However, while studying the man’s body language, Tali paused when she saw a cross shape on the man’s jaw. The shape was almost identical to the one Shepard had on her cheek.

“Aw, you remember me don’t you? We ran together in the Tenth Street Reds?” Shepard leaned backward as though struck.

“Finch! What are you doing on the Citadel?” 

Tali tilted her head, not quite following the conversation. She’d never heard of the Tenth Street Reds. Was it some kind of organization? It sounded like Shepard was involved with them, though.

“You probably don’t remember it yourself, running in a gang. But we haven’t forgotten you, White Necklace.” 

“You have no right to call me that. I don’t work for the Reds anymore,” Shepard glared at the man called Finch. Tali’s eyes widened. Had Shepard been exiled from the Tenth Street Reds? No, that didn’t make sense, she sounded like she left by… by choice? Had… she betrayed them? 

Tali shivered. She knew what happened when a quarian commits treason. She remembered all too clearly the panic that fell over the flotilla when quarians from the Usela began to go missing. The hurt in her chest when their kidnapper was discovered.

She had met Golo’Mekk vas Usela only once, while her father took her with him to take a look at a busted engine on the Usela. It was around that time the children went missing, and found on shipping manifests on slaver shuttles. Looking back now, she was in the right age group for one of Golo’s kidnappings at the time. She was glad he was gone now, probably scrounging around for food and drink in the Terminus Systems. Maybe he was even dead.

“I wouldn’t be so rude about it if I were you. You and I both know things about your past that nobody else does.”

“My bio is public record, everyone knows I ran with gangs as a kid.”

Tali jumped involuntarily at the information. She hadn’t known Shepard had been a part of a gang. Shepard had never mentioned it…

“But, there’s a part of the story they don’t know. A part only you, me, and Mala know about,” A serpentine smile twisted the stranger’s face. “How you actually ended up leaving the Tenth Street Reds.”

Shepard seemed to freeze, her back as straight as a ruler, like a brace had been slapped onto her from nowhere. Oh Keelah, she had betrayed them! Wait. Wait, no, she couldn’t make any assumptions. Assumptions were the first step to utter failure and abject stupidity. 

Tali looked to Wrex for a second opinion, trying to get his read on things. From the wide-set eye she could see, Wrex seemed bored, but he didn’t make a move.

“What the hell do you want?” All diplomacy in the commander’s demeanor completely shattered. Tali gulped.

“One of our friends, Curt Weisman, got arrested while in turian space. We’d like you to talk to the turian guard in the bar to get him out,” Finch’s sneer grew a little deeper. 

“What was a member of the Tenth Street Reds doing in turian space?” 

“Since your days, the Reds have expanded. We do some salvage, some shipping here and there. That kind of thing.” Finch put emphasis on the word ‘shipping,’ but the commander didn’t show any outward emotion. She had been openly hostile not a few moments ago. Now she seemed bottled up and… strangely calm.

“I’ll go talk to the guard and see what I can do,” Wait, what? Hadn’t she admitted to betraying her old comrades a few moments ago? Or, was there something else going on that she didn’t understand? There wasn’t enough information, Keelah, she was just so lost right now. Tali’s guts twisted.

“Thanks, Shepard. I knew you wouldn’t forget your old friends. Do this for us, and you’ll never see me again.” Finch left without another word, the same smug look plastered on his face. Tali traced his steps with her eyes as he left. Then, damage control.

Finch had called Shepard a friend, but she didn’t seem to want anything to do with him. If he wasn’t a friend, she wouldn’t have agreed to help him. Tali knew enough about her Captain to say she would never betray a friend. Didn’t she?

“Shepard, what’s…?” Tali stepped out of her thoughts, but Shepard and Wrex were already marching to Chora’s Den. Tali rushed to catch up.

Her teeth clenched when Shepard walked up to the brown, grumpy turian Finch wanted her to speak with. Even if she was being loyal to her old friends, it was clear that they were not upstanding citizens. Tali’s eyes kept flitting to Wrex for assistance, for reassurance, for help. One eye was trained on her, but he subtly shook his head. He wasn’t going to interfere.

“Can I help you?” The turian asked, sour at the interruption. Strange, because as far as Tali could tell he wasn’t actually doing anything. Or maybe he had been staring at the dancers on the platform and was rudely interrupted, she couldn’t quite say.

“A member of the Tenth Street Reds wanted me to use my Spectre authority to release Curt Weisman.” Shepard whispered. Tali’s chest clenched. What was she doing?

“The xenophobe? I should have known he’d have friends.” The brown turian bowed his head in deference. “Thank you for the information, human. We’ll be sure to increase the guard on his cell.” He said, his half-lidded eyes brightening in amusement. Wrex even seemed to crack a small smile. Tali just felt nauseous.

Someone cursed from behind her. “I should have known you’d rat us out, Shepard! Now it’s payback time!”

Tali twisted immediately and placed a hand on her shotgun. It was Finch. The commander gazed at him from between Tali and Wrex, an eerie calm coloring her features. The look in her eyes made Tali’s blood run cold. She watched, frozen as the Captain of the Normandy stepped towards Finch, a hand on the HMWP VII pistol strapped to her hard suit.

“When I’m through with you, everyone in the galaxy will know what the first human Spectre really is. A whore, and a—”

The commander shot Finch between the eyes. Tali squealed like a baby, but only for a split second. He stood up like a puppet on strings, blood oozing from the ugly shrapnel that sheared apart his forehead falling down his eyes like tears. Then he fell onto his stomach when his knees gave out. Tali gawked.

The music kept playing. The asari were still dancing. Nobody seemed to have noticed a human had died at the hands of one of his old friends. A shipmate. Oh Keelah, she wanted to puke.

“Impressive. Perhaps the first human Spectre will not be a disappointment after all!” The turian’s mandibles spread in what Tali could only hope was not glee. Her throat caught when she realized it almost definitely was. “Goodbye, Spectre. I have some business to take care of.” Tali only watched him for a moment before her gaze snapped back to the corpse of a man the commander used to know, bleeding on the plastic floor of Chora’s Den.

“That was for my family, you son of a bitch,” Tali wouldn’t have caught the commander’s words if her suit didn’t amplify the sound. That just threw another wrench into the equation; what did this man do to her family that made the commander so hostile to him? Tali tried to remember if anything else they had spoken about led to this, but she just didn’t know… she just didn’t know.

Tali had been wrong about Shepard. Her commander was a traitor to her own people. She had swapped allegiances and, as far as Tali could tell, had refused to be loyal to anyone. Tali’s chest constricted into itself and she wanted to puke. She wanted to go back to the ship and tear off the Colossus armor that bosh’tet had given her.

“Tali?” Her head shot up and she stared at the commander, standing a few paces away at the door. Wrex stood boorishly next to her. “Are you coming with us?” A look of concern that didn’t belong on the face of a shameful one forced Tali’s eyes away. She just gazed in horror at the ugly head of a now-deceased member of the Tenth Street Reds.

“Tali,” No. Don’t look at her, she’s a traitor, a shameful one, she doesn’t deserve eye contact. “I didn’t realize this would bother you. But, you have to understand that this man deserved what he got.” Her voice got stone cold, angry. Tali swallowed a whine. 

“He killed one of my friends, Tali, and just now he was trying to blackmail a Spectre into releasing a criminal from custody. Whatever the Tenth Street Reds were in the past they’ve grown in the worst possible way. I know that from experience.” 

The commander paused again, and Tali lifted her helmet just a little bit to look at Shepard’s chin. Tali breathed in and out once. “This… isn’t something we should talk about in a bar, Shepard. Can we… we should go. Let’s go back to the Normandy?” 

“Okay. We can do that. I need to buy a few things first though. We’re headed to Noveria soon, and we need to stock up on internal temperature stabilizers, medical interfaces, and some new armor for Wrex...” Of course. The whole reason they had passed by Chora’s Den in the first place was because it was on the way to the lower markets and ‘Morlan’s Famous Shop’. “If you want, though, we can head over to the Presidium’s Financial District.”

Tali finally managed to lift up her helmet completely and meet Shepard’s eyes. Concern, feigned worry, colored Shepard’s yellow eyes. Tali breathed in once more, preparing her questions for later. She nodded. “Let’s go.”


	3. Dog eat Dog

Tali stared blankly at the body of the second crime boss. Keelah, this whole mission is going to be a disaster, she can feel it. Helena Blake is obviously a criminal, and she was no doubt planning to betray the commander the next chance she got. Despite all of the questions she had, all of the doubt brewing inside her that a lifetime on a quarian ship would have asked her to stomp out and squash… she still worried about her Captain.

She didn’t understand anything that was going on anymore. She was just one big ball of worry and concern, hobbling to and fro on mechanical legs while her head floated off into deep space. Blessed Ancestors, what did she have to do to trust her Captain again? She had already gone with the commander to defeat the crime boss cloistered in Mavigon, and she had helped defeat the slavers on Klensal, but…

He stood up like a puppet on strings, blood oozing from the ugly shrapnel that sheared apart his forehead and fell down his eyes like tears.

“Tali?”

“I’m right here,” Tali responded instinctively. She had to focus. After all, how could she trust her Captain if she wasn’t trustworthy herself? You must always be in the moment, Tali, her father’s voice echoed once more. You never know when you might be needed. In the present moment, huddled in a crudely cut mine on the uninhabitable planet Klensal, Commander Shepard nodded at her and gave her instruction.

“Go check for any decrypted containers in the alcove over there.” She pointed to the heavy gate closest to them to punctuate. “I’ll go take a look through the hardcopy files in the one next to it. Wrex.” Shepard looked behind Tali, but he wasn’t there. Tali twisted around a little to try and find him. 

“Huh. The krogan is slipperier than I thought,” the commander said.

“Should we go looking for him?” Tali asked. The commander shook her head.

“Wrex can—“

“I’m right here, don’t get your fur in a knot.” Wrex’s voice echoed from a half-built branch at the side of the mine. The commander let out a puff of air and quirked her lips upward.

“See if you can find anything useful,” Shepard said.

“Doubtful.” 

The commander rolled her eyes, and Tali nodded to her Captain. She stepped through the gate to the lower reaches of the mine they were in. She’d just have to get in, decrypt some weapons lockers (because the Ancestors know Shepard couldn’t hack her way through the lock on a child’s lunchbox if her life depended on it) and get out. 

It killed her to know she was doubting her Captain, the one responsible for all the lives aboard the Normandy, but… perhaps it was her own fault for signing on in the first place. She was the one who had insisted on joining, even though she didn’t know a thing about the commander or even humans in general. She would just have to live with her choice. Maybe someday she would be able to trust Shepard again.

As she started to run her average decryption algorithm on the weapons locker, she heard a pound on the lock and the gate she had opened slammed closed. She didn’t bother to look behind her, but she did puff out a sigh.

“I’m sorry, Commander, but I don’t want to talk right now. Is it important?” 

“Not to the mission, no,” a slow, booming voice responded. “But, I do need to talk to you.” Tali’s eyes bored into Wrex’s nose, his eyes too wide-set for her to keep decent eye contact from her position. It was hard enough keeping one eye on her work and one eye on her shipmate with binocular eyes trapped inside a helmet with minimal peripheral vision, thank you very much. She wasn’t in the right mood to talk with anyone.

“Are you worried about my health?” Tali asked politely.

“No. I know you can take care of yourself, I’ve seen you do it before. I wouldn’t be worried about you unless you suddenly keeled over and puked in your helmet.”

“If you aren’t worried about me, then why did you want to talk to me?”

“Listen, quarian. You’ve been as tense as a klixen in the rain ever since Shepard shot that asshole in Chora’s Den. I know you can handle dead humans, I’ve seen you handle dead humans. So why the hell are you treating that dead human like he was your brood mate or something?”

Tali squinted and sucked in a breath. She could easily lie, brush off his concerns and refuse to talk to him. Instead, she sighed and shook her head. Of course she was going to tell him everything that was bothering her. No secrets among shipmates.

“However that ‘asshole’ acted, it was clear that he was part of the same crew as the commander was, some time ago. Loyalty to your crew is more important than your own feelings. She shouldn’t have killed him, even if he called her a whore. I don’t feel comfortable having her cover me when I’m afraid she’s going to shoot me in the back.”

Her algorithm finished when she did, so she bent into the weapon locker and pulled out a few ammunition mods and an all but useless Kessler X she set to work compressing into omni-gel. Her stash was getting low; 36 units of omni-gel wouldn’t get her past the next corner.

“From what I heard, he killed her family.” 

“Listen Wrex, I was there. I know what she said and to be honest I don’t believe it for a second. She was a part of their team, their crew. They were shipmates! And shipmates don’t kill shipmates for any reason. He didn’t even have a gun or armor! At the very least she’s hiding something from us. If she mistrusts us enough to keep secrets then she probably doesn’t care about us in the first place.” Tali angrily slapped 20 units of omni-gel onto the next weapons locker, not bothering with her algorithm. She was too worked up to deal with this. Too worked up to deal with that heartless Captain of hers.

She tossed the obsolete light turian armor behind her. Garrus didn’t wear light armor anymore, not after Shepard gave him that Ursa VIII medium armor from Feros. Much like how Tali didn’t need her Hydra I anymore after Shepard gave her the Colossus IX. Or how Kaidan didn’t wear Onyx IV after Shepard gave him the Phoenix IX. Even Wrex didn’t wear his original Mercenary anymore once the superior Titan VIII passed hands from the commander.

“It ever occur to you that humans don’t think in terms of shipmates and crew? Or that most humans don’t grow up on spaceships? Hell, the way you talk I may as well remind you that humans are from the planet Earth, and eat levo-amino acid based foods. Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but humans… are aliens.” 

“What’s your point?” Tali punched the locker in front of her.

“No other species in the galaxy is as stupidly loyal to every group they join as you, quarian. Especially not puny human gangs made up by stupid people to try and raise a species of boneheads up to the top of a food chain that’s been in power since before I was even born.” 

“Why do you even care!? So what if her old allegiance was to a gang of racists? Since when do members of the same species kill other members who are unarmed and stupid when your people are dying?” Tali sounded like she was begging, but she found it hard to care. Absently, she slapped all of her omni-gel onto the lock of the final weapons locker. She kicked it when she remembered she was low by 4 units of omni-gel. She would have to open it manually. She cursed.

“You’re thicker than I thought.” Wrex shook his head. “I’ll say it again because I don’t think it got through your head the first time. Humans. Are. Aliens. Not quarians.” Wrex took a step forward and pointed at the ground. “They don’t think the way you do. They don’t govern the way you do. Hell, they don’t even look the way you do, and I’ve been around long enough to see quarians under those suits. Do you know anything about humanity at all?”

“The humans have a homeworld!” Tali had to get him to shut up. She started up her heavy decryption algorithm and tapped her foot impatiently, trying to look as busy as possible. “They can touch themselves skin-to-skin without hurting themselves, they can breathe in real air, and they have the oh-so-desirable luxury of not caring about their own people!”

“Listen here, you idiot.” Wrex lumbered over to her. Tali refused to face him, it would be all too easy for him to see the fog in her helmet. “You’re a quarian, and for all intents and purposes you’re the only quarian around for the next few light-years. Your people aren’t here. You’re surrounded by Commander Shepard’s people, and a couple of scaly dumbasses she decided to bring along with her.

“Now, I’ve actually been paying attention to the people we’re serving with. And I’ve learned a lot from looking beyond the superficial ‘they don’t wear spacesuits all the time’ nonsense.” He leaned into her line of sight. Tali tried to lean away, and her finger almost slipped against a button she did not want to press. Her suit’s environmental processes kicked in, trying to cool her down. 

“When humans are desperate, they get stupid, and they get ruthless. If they want something, they’ll do everything in their power to own it. No one is safe from anyone.” Tali forgot to respond to the corrective algorithm the lock had thrown at her. Her omni-tool dimmed; the decryption had failed.

“Earth is a varren-eat-varren world,” he drawled, his slow speech punctuating his every word. “You see, I actually went to Shepard and asked her about what happened there. According to her, the Tenth Street Reds cropped up in a dirty city called Santiago in between big ass mountains and the largest ocean on the planet. They were angry kids who killed anything that didn’t have hair on their heads. If a human got in the way, they would kill them too.”

“You’re wrong,” Tali choked, her head lowered in grief. “Keelah, nobody would ever kill their own people like that.” A quarian behaving so callously would be exiled immediately, becoming vas Nedas, nar Tasil. Crew of nowhere, child of no one.

“I’m old, kid. I don’t want to see you twist yourself up because aliens have weird wiring in their brains that make them sound crazy. The sooner you realize nobody else is like you—that no alien will ever think of things the way you do—the more time you’ll last before you go crazy.”

“I’m…” Tali swallowed. “I’m not sure I understand it completely. I mean, this still sounds like something out of a horror vid but…” She looked at Wrex fully now. “Thank you. For letting me know.”

“No problem. One more thing.” A whirr sounded, and Wrex handed her 4 units of omni-gel in a nice little packet. Tali cradled it in her hands and stared at it.

“Thanks.” There wasn’t much else she could say. She was still trying to digest the crash course on alien psychology she just received from a 1300 year old krogan mercenary, on a damp and useless planet nobody knew about. Instead, she lumped the omni-gel onto the weapons locker and opened it up to grab the loot.


	4. Thief

There were no weapons in the locker. Instead, hanging from a contraption made of wire, a small coverall with soft padding at the shoulders, chest, and knees shone white at her. One of the sleeves was torn at the elbow, but the other stretched down to the wrist. She was taken aback, but curious enough to press her gloved fingers on the sleeves of the…

“Is this supposed to be armor?” Wrex lumbered over her and stared at the small garment. In all honesty, she thought the thing was really pretty. It was nicely buttoned, and the padding was delicately woven into the fabric on the outside. There was some kind of writing on the sleeves, but she couldn’t decipher it. Translators always hiccupped with non-digital writing.

“It’s a piece of crap is what it is. This thing couldn’t protect you from a spitball,” Wrex huffed. “It’s useless, just leave it behind.” With that, he headed back to the door and left. Tali stared at the coverall for a little bit longer, committing it to memory if only for its aesthetic value. She was about to close the door of the weapons locker and prepared to rejoin her shipmates when her translator finally deciphered the writing on the sleeves.

White Necklace was written on the left sleeve, the one that was intact. Shepard was written on the torn sleeve.

A chill ran down Tali’s spine. Finch had called the commander ‘White Necklace.’ This belonged to her, Tali was sure of it. How did it get all the way to Klensal, a world barely hospitable at the best of times and hazardous at the worst?

“Tali? Wrex and I are getting ready to leave. Did you find something I should know about down there?” Shepard called from the other end of the tunnel connecting the rough cuts in the mountain.

“Just give me a minute!” Tali shouted. She snatched Shepard’s outfit from the hanger in the locker and stood there stupidly for what felt like hours. Where was she supposed to hide this thing? She didn’t have any pockets big enough for—

“That wasn’t a no, Tali.” Shepard teased, suddenly standing in the very place Wrex was not two minutes ago. “What is it?”

Tali took in a deep breath. She could hear her father’s gruff voice lilting in her ear. No secrets among shipmates, Tali.

“When I was decrypting the lock on this weapons locker I discovered some kind of… childhood armor. I think it may have belonged to you...”

Shepard’s eyes narrowed and her eyebrows pulled down. She plodded up to the weapons locker and took a look at the white coverall hanging inside.

Tali studied Shepard’s face. The commander’s body went ramrod straight, just like it did when she held a conversation with Finch in the hallway to Chora’s Den. Something flew into her eyes, a cold confidence of some sort that made Tali shift her weight from foot to foot.

Then her mood shifted again, and what Tali could only read as fear shoots through her face. The commander’s eyes narrowed and she glared at the coverall, and Tali got the distinct impression it should have burst into flames. Just as suddenly as it came, the strange emotions that flitted past glazed over into calm. Shepard took in a deep breath and closed her eyes.

“Did I step over some kind of line, Commander? I-I don’t know what ‘white necklace’ means in human cultures but…” Tali whispered. How could a tiny white outfit with minor padding and the words white necklace on it cause such a reaction out of the Captain of the Normandy? All of the possibilities she could come up with left her short of breath.

The commander stared, gaze all but boring through Tali’s helmet, but her eyes were blank. Then she turned to the coverall hanging inside the locker. “Make a DNA scan of the armor then send the data to my omni-tool when you’re done.” No explanation, no justification. Just freezing calm on glazed yellow eyes Tali couldn’t decrypt with an algorithm.

“Aye-aye, Commander.” Tali agreed. She turned to the coverall and ran her scanning program over it. While it ran, she considered her options. She didn’t have any pockets big enough to carry it in her suit, and she dreaded Shepard’s reaction if she walked out cradling it in her arms.

Her hood. Without a second thought, she folded the outfit roughly, lowered her hood, and stuffed the white clothes into the pocket. It left unsightly lumps all over her hood’s design but that was the least of her worries. Suddenly, her blood ran cold. She felt nauseous, but there was no practical way for her to throw up right now.

With the small mystery tucked safely in between her hood and her helmet, Tali finished the DNA scan and sent it to Shepard’s omni-tool as instructed. She stalked up to her shipmates desperately hoping they wouldn’t think anything was amiss. Shepard either didn’t notice or didn’t care, nodding at her and jogging to the exit. Wrex did notice however, as he scowled at her and shook his head softly.

“What?” Tali tapped her fingers against her legs, her knees were shaking, the pads of her suit chafed against her limbs, she couldn’t breathe.

“Just be aware; that lump in your hood doesn’t belong to you.” Wrex lumbered away, following one step behind Shepard. Tali fell behind.

_Thief._

_Quarians are treated like second-class citizens, like outcasts, like beggars, like thieves. You have done nothing to change their perception. Why have you stolen your Captain’s property? What is wrong with you?_

Tali breathed in deeply, staring at the back of Shepard’s head as she stalked two steps behind her. No secrets among shipmates, Tali, her father taught her. He would be so disappointed in her now, on a human ship where secrets were as common as oxygen. He’d snort at her behavior, the secretive culture rubbing off on her, plain as day in the lumpy pocket of her hood. Ancestors, forgive her.

She couldn’t stop now. She had to get to the bottom of this. She had to know what was wrong.


	5. Closure

Tali bounced nervously on her heels in front of Shepard’s quarters, her…

(Stolen)

…purloined coverall tucked not-so-neatly into the pocket under her hood. She had only sent Shepard the DNA sample a few hours ago. Tali’s blood ran cold, and she did her best to steel herself. 

Tali figured she would wait until it was empty and quiet enough for her to have a conversation with Shepard without fear of anyone overhearing. Humans slept during the night cycle, so that would be the best time to talk; nobody would overhear or interfere. 

Mustering the whole of her courage, Tali pressed firmly on the access panel. She walked into the Captain’s Quarters of the Normandy and found one table, three chairs, a bed, a desk, and a private bathroom. Otherwise, the cabin was completely empty. 

It didn’t make any sense. Tali had planned for this. Maybe the commander was somewhere else? She certainly wasn’t eating anything, or she’d be sitting at the mess table. She wasn’t down in the cargo bay, because Tali had just come up from there. Was she in the med bay? 

Then the ship stilled. Others wouldn’t notice it, what with how quietly the Normandy could run, but to a quarian born and raised on a Liveship, where the central fixture was meant to be in constant motion to better facilitate plant growth? It was as obvious as a brick floating in the air... If bricks could do that.

The only person who had the authority to stop the ship’s FTL travel while everyone was asleep was the commander. And if she stopped the ship, it probably meant she was preparing to go groundside again. Tali could have sworn they weren’t at Amaranthine yet; the drive core wasn’t going at the speeds necessary to reach the planet at that distance away from Klensal in only a few hours, even with guidance from the mass relays.

Something must have come up. Maybe Shepard had found another limping old meteor she hoped to find a Prothean Data Disk on? She seemed to have a penchant for picking up any anomalies she came across, and Tali just so happened to be the only one capable of deciphering the all but useless relics and elements she brought back. Tali sighed; it looked like her confrontation would have to wait.

Tali made it to the galaxy map when she noticed Shepard was already at the airlock, equipped in Ursa VII light armor complete with breather helmet, just staring at the door like a statue. It made Tali think of what a little Shepard would look like, dressed in the cute white coverall… surrounded by grime and dirt and blood.

She cautiously and quietly began to walk closer. She could be perfectly silent if she focused hard enough on the weight she placed on her feet, but for this she suspected it would be a good idea to let Shepard know she was there.

“Commander Shepard?”

When Shepard turned to face Tali, she had the same cold, hard look on her face as… as when she’d killed Finch, as when she’d discovered the white coverall on Klensal, as when she’d seen a quarian tiptoeing in her direction in the middle of the night. Tali might not be in the place she expected, but she had made a plan and she was going to stick to it. Today, she was going to find out her Captain’s secret.

“Tali. If you’re concerned about me going solo on a mission, you don’t have to be. I can handle myself.” 

Tali’s eyes narrowed and she shook her head. “Shepard, I... that’s not why I’m here.” Tali held her breath for a moment. Her eyes shut as tight as they could, Tali spoke quickly. “You’ve been acting strange ever since that Finch human tried to blackmail you on the Citadel.” Shepard lowered her head, glaring at her from shielded eyes. “You’re keeping a secret. I want to know what it is.”

“Right.” Shepard lowered her head. Then she raised her head to the proper level and blinked. “You want to know my ‘secret’,” There was a strange inflection on Shepard’s voice that Tali couldn’t decipher. “Well, good, because I want to know why you’re hiding that coverall we found on Klensal in your hood.”

Thief!

“I…” Tali stopped, a jolt of nervous energy surging through her whole body. She only just noticed the fabric sleeve on her shoulder, unseen because of the armored suit’s touch repressors. Shepard walked over, coldly, calmly, and came near enough that Tali tried to lean away, a leg kicked back to keep her steady. Shepard pulled the coverall out of Tali’s hood in one fluid motion and tilted back.

“Well?” Shepard held the coverall in her arms, an inscrutable expression on her eyes. Tali averted her gaze.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to…” Tali’s throat was closed off, and a little node in her helmet went off warning her of high blood pressure. When you make a mistake, don’t hide from it, Rael’Zorah said. You will not be killed for making a mistake on a quarian ship.

But this wasn’t a quarian ship, this was a human ship. A human ship where secrets were common, shipmates were killed… and a quarian had stolen someone else’s possession. She breathed in through her nose, then out through her mouth.

Tell the truth, Tali.

“I stole your coverall because I was going to ask you what the writing on the sleeves meant. I want to know what happened to you with the Tenth Street Reds, and why you are so angry whenever things about your past come up in conversation. I wanted to understand you better, so… so I can trust you on the mission.”

“So you want to know what happened to me.” Shepard didn’t sound angry. She sounded… Tali didn’t know how she sounded. 

“Yes.” Tali nodded. After a moment, Shepard neatly folded the white coverall into a square. She set it down on one of the chairs the navigators sat in during the day-cycle and stood up.

“Then come with me,” Shepard waved her arm for Tali to follow.

“I’m sorry I stole from you, I wasn’t thinking straight! I know you must be angry at me but—” Tali stopped halfway through her prepared speech, the meaning of Shepard’s words hitting her a few moments late. “Wait. You mean you… you’re actually going to tell me what happened?”

“No,” Shepard opened the airlock and stepped into it. Tali rushed to join her before the door closed and the decontamination process began. “I’m going to show you.”

The ship they entered once the decontamination process was done was named the MSV Sphyxis, built for transport of people. It seemed almost entirely abandoned, but a few long-dead human bodies were scattered. The walls were covered in gunshot residue, and broken pieces of glass floated idly by next to opened windows on the ground and on the walls. This ship was banged up and broken, but many pieces were still in functioning condition.

“This seem like the kind of thing you’d bring back to your people?” Shepard walked along the edge of the hall, where the ground was made of metal for the mag-boots to stick.

“No, I… Not right now.”

“Come on then. She should be this way,” Shepard walked calmly through the doors. Tali rushed to keep pace.

“Who should be this way?” 

“The woman who raised me.”

Tali remained silent after that.

The cargo bay of the ship was mostly empty, with some large containers in the corners that must have once been filled with frozen food stores. The rest of the ship was barren, made of plastic and metal, with broken glass floors making Tali cautious of suit ruptures. Shepard simply continued to press forward.

They made their way to the rest chamber of the ship, to the right of the cockpit. Tali stopped once she entered. The room was covered in paint and papers, each word so closely scribbled to the other Tali’s translator had no hope of deciphering them.

Tali had so many questions. She wanted to ask Shepard everything about this ship, how did she find it, and what did her DNA scan have to do with this? How did this all tie into the Tenth Street Reds? It didn’t make any…

Shepard left the room. Tali jolted back to the present and ran to her, on the other side of the hallway, in a different room. This room was more clearly suited for habitation, with beds everywhere and a recording computer in the back. The most interesting feature, however, was the tall, heavily burned human woman lying down on the bottom of a bunk bed, arms splayed out as if in greeting.

Tali looked at Shepard. Moisture wetted her cheeks, and she took a deep breath of the limited, recycled air in her helmet.

“There she is.” Shepard said, her voice cracking in a way Tali understood. This was the sound of grief. Tali stared at the woman on the bunk. This was the woman that raised Commander Shepard on planet Earth.

Her cheeks were high, almost level with her open eyes. There were golden piercings on her eyebrow and ears, and Tali wondered what cultural significance that might have. Her mouth was small, puckered with red paint and shallow against her depressed chin. Her limbs were long and wispy, though Tali didn’t know if that was because of genetics or malnutrition. 

She was tall, like Tali, like Shepard. Her skin was smooth, no wrinkles mired her face. Tali suspected she was very beautiful among humans, though she wore an ugly orange jumpsuit, torn off at the midriff to expose her navel. And she was dead.

“This was your guardian?”

“Mala Bai,” Shepard walked away from her and towards a console in the back of the room. “She took me in when I was really small. Told me my mom wanted her to take care of me after she died.” Shepard had to pause after that, moisture clotting up in her throat. Tali knelt down to take a closer look at the woman on the bed.

“How did you--?” The console opened up and awaited commands. Shepard’s lips turned up in what was more of a grimace than a smile and looked at her.

“Play the first entry,” Shepard said.

“July 23rd, 2178. I finally found out where she was. Alliance public record says she was an orphan, raised on the streets. Typical. Pretending my daughter never had a family to go back to makes it easier for the bastards to act like she’s just a tool, a fancy robot that can fling biotics in the direction they specify, and not a human being.” Shepard clenched her fists, but Tali didn’t say anything.

“I’m not surprised at what she did on Torfan. She must think they all deserved it.” The voice paused, and Shepard shook her head. “I don’t know who I’m recording this for. Maybe I can show these to her when I catch up to her on Elysium.” A breath. “I wish I could just pull her out, sue the Alliance for kidnapping my daughter, but they’d never listen to me. The lawyers would all point to the incident back in 2165.

“…Captain says we’re going to stop at a nearby planet to restock on oxygen, then continue on to Elysium. Once we’re there, the crew will part ways and I can focus on finding my daughter. Maybe even get some closure for what happened to Charra and Ganmi, too. Here’s hoping.”

The recording ended. Tali looked at the body of the woman, preserved almost perfectly in the zero-gravity, zero-atmosphere environment of the dead ship. So… the Alliance forced Shepard to enlist because of her biotics? Evidently they also lied about her family life in her public record. What else in her record was falsified?

“Shepard…” Tali didn’t lift her head much, but Shepard’s head snapped to make eye contact. “How did you find this place?” 

Shepard tried to smile, but it was hollow. “You helped. That DNA scan you did? Helped me find her deep in the bowels of Kowloon ship documentation.” Shepard breathed in through her nose. 

Tali wasn’t satisfied yet, though. She wanted to know more. “How did you know she was on a Kowloon ship?”

“I didn’t. I just ran her DNA through the Kowloon ships on a hunch

“How did you know the DNA on the coverall was even hers?”

“It couldn’t have belonged to anyone else.” Shepard shrugged. Tali stomped her foot and her elbows locked. This still didn’t make any sense, and this didn’t answer her questions. She was done being polite about this.

“Why was the coverall on Klensal in the first place? What does any of this have to do with the Tenth Street Reds? Why did you kill Finch in Chora’s Den?”

“Goddammit, Tali, Finch killed my sisters!” Shepard snapped, lunging toward her. With Shepard standing and Tali kneeling, Tali had to lean back to avoid getting hit, raising her arms in defense. She didn’t want to fight Shepard; she didn’t really want to make this harder for her…

But she just had to know. Tali couldn’t take having so many secrets anymore. She couldn’t go one more moment without knowing everything, without understanding what happened to her Commander that made her kill a human she’d once called a friend. It didn’t make any logical sense to her. She needed it to be logical.

“Why did Finch kill your sisters?” Her father would have hated her if he saw how she made demands of her Captain. Luckily, her father wasn’t here.

“Because they were aliens!” 

“What?” 

“You see that corpse, Tali? That’s the body of my fucking mother,” Shepard glared at Tali, and spoke before Tali could speak up. “She adopted me, and Charra, and Ganmi regardless of race, and I will not let you shit on her memory because you want to know why the fuck I killed a murderer!”

An uncontrolled biotic pulse hit Tali smack in the chest, making her fall on her ass. Tali gripped the edges of the bunk bed to keep herself from rattling her helmet, and when she regained her balance, Shepard was glaring daggers at her hands, clenching them. She glowed with biotic energy and Tali had the distinct impression she was going to explode. 

“Play the second entry,” Shepard yelled to the console, the biotic energy dissipating. Tali remained silent as the recording played.

“June 30th, 2178. We landed on Klensal, but there was some kind of crime ring a few klicks away from our drop-point. They attacked our ship and almost damaged the windows. Who the fuck would even put windows on a spaceship anyway? They’re too easy to break.

“We lost half of our cargo and most of our food to the mercenaries. One of those cargo boxes held my daughter’s old coverall. That was all I had left…

“It shouldn’t matter though. Captain says we’re booking it for Elysium and once we get there I can send a line to… to Lieutenant Shepard. Damn, I can’t believe I have to call her that now. I remember when she would call herself Peter Dwight, and would insist she could defend me in court because she played lawyer games so much.

“I just can’t help but wonder if I should have done something different. Sure the kids broke in but did I need to kill them? Maybe if… If I hadn’t bashed their heads in that night, would my daughter have come out different? Would she have been able to avoid joining the Reds? Could she have avoided butchering everyone on Torfan?

“…I don’t know. I just wish I could have a do-over. Try again from scratch. Maybe I could even have saved her sisters too.” Tali heard sobbing on the recording, a deep breath, trying to hold tears back. Tali didn’t realize the recording had ended until she looked up and found the tears didn’t belong to the recording; they belonged to her Captain.

Tali lowered her head and closed her eyes. Stupid. How much more insensitive could she get towards someone in grief? Tali hit herself in the face, but her trajectory was stopped by her faceplate, which only angered her more. Selfish bosh’tet. Her father would be ashamed of her. Her whole ship would be ashamed of her.

Tali began to realize that perhaps she would never know all the details. She had acted so selfishly she was surprised Shepard didn’t kick her off the team then and there. She wouldn’t have faulted her for it; a quarian captain would have placed a petition to remove her from the crew and transferred to a different ship. Tali stood herself up to see herself out, leave her grieving Captain in peace.

“Play the third entry.” 

Gunfire was in the background when the recording began.

“The mercs caught up with our ship! Damn it. I never wanted this. I just wanted to get to Elysium, talk to my daughter.” An explosion. “I’m sorry,” the recording of Mala Bai sobbed. Tali took another look at the woman, and realized she had bruises on her body, bruises from manhandling that never faded. “I know I’m going to die, but I can’t just leave this world without…

“Little doll. If you ever get this message, I want you to know that I love you. I don’t care what you did on Torfan, and I don’t care what the Alliance says. You get out of there as soon as you can. Find a job that you want. Live your life because God decided your family couldn’t live theirs.

“You get out there and you don’t worry your pretty little head about making me proud. I’ve been proud of you since the day you moved in with me. I lo—”

An explosion blew out the microphone on the recording. The machine recited static for a whole minute. The pause was heavy, tension pushing against everything like a high-pressure atmosphere. Tali waited patiently, not letting her own selfish desire for understanding grow larger than it should. Her Captain was grieving. She deserved some time to think.

Tali and Shepard were quiet for a minute. Two minutes.

“My sisters and I were on a transport ship to Jump Zero. Mala always wanted to see space, and we had finally pooled enough money to take her there. But Finch was there, and he blew up the drive core while we were in the stratosphere of Earth. Barely made it out alive.

“Charra’s half a body was found in Tijuana and Ganmi’s was a mangled horror show dumped on the streets of fuckin’ New York. Lot of corpses from the wreckage, but the only thing anyone seemed to care about was the new generation of biotic children they found downwind.”

“When the police found me, my biotics manifested for the first time in my life. Fucking assholes insisted I had to join the Alliance now, because biotics were ‘powerful and dangerous beings whose talents were best used to serve the human race as a whole’ or some other bullshit like that. Wound up getting a biotic amp and some basic training for the low, low price of me never getting a chance to look for my family.”

“What about the Reds? The recording said you joined them because your mother killed some men?”

“There are more details than that but... Yeah, you get the gist of it. When you found that coverall on Klensal I… hoped that meant Mala was still alive somewhere. So I ran the DNA test against all the Kowloon ships deployed between April 11th, 2172 and yesterday, January 17th, 2183. Then I found her…” Shepard fell silent again.

“It’s okay,” Tali whispered. “Don’t hold back. I promise I won’t say anything.”

Shepard glared, eyes gleaming. Tali nodded, and Shepard looked back at the cold body in front of her. She heaved and sobbed and some liquid oozed from her nose further along, but Tali kept her word. She got the uncovered secret she had always wanted.

Now it was Shepard’s turn to get the closure she’s always needed.

The End


End file.
